Summer’s Coming

Wind Surfers, Tarifa

It is only when one lives in a place that they can write the minute observations of seasonal change. Robin Graham, from Tarifa, our expert from Southern Spain, shares a snippet of daily life as awakenings of spring slowly shift into summer. Tarifa is a small town known for strong winds and a hangout for kite surfers and wind surfers. Robin takes us for a walk on the beach and the streets.

By Robin Graham

Suddenly it’s all colour again, as if Hockney had wandered away from the pool and down to the beach. The inverted pendulums of a dozen surf kites sway and swoop over the water, falling and rising across three bands of blue; the sky, the sea, the brilliant strip of bright turquoise that laps at the sand.

It doesn’t yet feel like summer on the skin but it’s certainly beginning to look like it. Nobody is swimming in the cold water but the swimsuits are out, the afternoon warm enough to bathe in the sun; bikinis, speedos and pre-season bodies litter the strand, bordered at its rear by an eruption of scrubby Spring growth – low-lying marine grasses and plants, a mess now of purples, yellows, blues and reds.

I paddle.

Back in the old town the little boutiques have opened up and dusted themselves off. Ceramics and Moroccan jewellery, lamps and throws and all kinds of scented stuff. The very brown girls in baggy hippy pants are back with their flip-flopped, tussle-haired boyfriends.

In our neighborhood people have poked their heads out; they linger on the street, doorstep conversations replacing the hurried, huddled hoodies and overcoats of last week. The sun glares down on everything like a woken god. It isn’t breathing fire yet but it’s taking preparatory breaths.

Robin Graham, from Tarifa in southern Spain, writes stories. Some of them are about places and some of them are just made up. A lot of them can be found, with accompanying photography, at www.alotofwind.com. He’s a private person but, strangely, doesn’t mind being followed on Twitter: @robinjgraham or liked on Facebook: alotofwind.com.